Torch Singer

Hollywood sometimes went pretty far afield to find offbeat plots and Torch Singer is one the most offbeat you will see. It starts off soapy and ends up as a love story of sorts and in between there is some comedy and some musical numbers - something for everyone. I kept waiting for it to descend into bathos and tears but Claudette Colbert was so excellent that she singlehandedly kept the show afloat.

Ordinarily I don't care for Colbert much but I found new respect for her acting ability and was amazed to learn she sang her own songs in this picture. Other readers have rehashed the story but I just want to add a few words about the supporting cast. It was refreshing to see Ricardo Cortez in a role that was not sinister - in fact, he was kind-hearted and almost tender. I can never get enough of Lyda Roberti, who I thought had a future as a top film comedienne but died too soon. Here she's only on screen for about 15 minutes. In a night club scene you can get a glimpse of Dennis O'Keefe behind David Manners' shoulder.

This picture was headed for a sub-par rating from me as it is a very odd and contrived story, but as reported it was salvaged by Colbert's performance. Just enjoy it and don't ask too many questions.

This is a touching if not extraordinary film about a woman who has a child out of wedlock, gives it up for adoption and suffers a great deal despite achieving wealth, glamour and fame first as a nightclub torch singer and then as a children's radio personality. This may have been Claudette Colbert's first great cinematic tour de force, gorgeously photographed by Karl Struss (through whose lens she also appeared to huge advantage in Sign of the Cross and Four Frightened People), sheathed in a variety of Travis Banton gowns and singing rather ludicrous songs by Ralph Rainger and Leo Robin in her own voice and let's give her a nod for that! The role is as juicy as can be, giving her the opportunity to essay mother love, humiliation, anger, despair, bitterness, drunkenness, nobility, eroticism - you name it. What a showcase! The screen bursts with life when she is at its center. The other performers, including an underused Lyda Roberti as a fellow unwed mother and a stiff David Manners as the father of the child, serve as window dressing. The only standout aside from Colbert is Ethel Griffies as Manners's stodgy, coldhearted aunt; acting like hers, in the grand old fashion, died decades ago but not until talkies captured the work of some of its practitioners, and it is still a treat to watch.

"I get a lot of proposals too, but marriage isn't one of them."

This is such a great vehicle for the adorable and talented Claudette Colbert, so despite this film's flaws, if you're a fan of hers, it's one to see. She plays a woman who has a child out of wedlock, making a highly sympathetic protagonist, something that clearly puts us in pre-Code territory at the beginning of the film (and speaking of adorable, the babies we see early are on are mighty cute too). Her roommate (Lyda Roberti) has to fend off workplace harassment before disappearing, leaving Colbert's character unable to pay the rent and begging for help from the wealthy family of the baby's father. She's turned away, so in her desperation, decides to give up her baby to the church who helped her with her pregnancy. She leaves her baby with this advice: "Don't ever let any man make a sucker out of you. Make them know what you're worth. Anything they get for nothing is always cheap."

The film then settles into its next act, which has her becoming a nightclub, er torch singer, starting from the bottom. The scene of her listlessly singing in front of a couple shoveling spaghetti into their mouths is priceless, but soon she's performing in much finer venues. Of course she is, she's Claudette Colbert, and for me it was a treat to hear her sing in this film. Her sleek hairstyles and the gowns from Travis Banton are stunning, and soon she draws the attention of an admirer (Ricardo Cortez). The film was firing on all cylinders at this point, as Colbert seems to toughened and flirtatious, for example, this interaction with a middle-aged businessman:

Him: "I don't stay up that late on account of my lumbago." Her: "Oh, lumbago? (sweeping her eyes over him, then looking him in the eye) I have something grand for lumbago. ... I'll fix you up."

The film then shifts when after rising to the top, she fills in as the radio voice for a children's bedtime show on a lark, and becomes a hit there too. You can see what's coming a mile away, her desire to reunite with her now 5-year-old daughter, something I had resigned myself to, but then on top of it the film piles on the child's father (David Manners), having returned from China and who says he had wired for her before leaving. I loved how Colbert's character was never punished for having premarital sex, but the film ends with the nuclear family restored in a rather nauseating and predictable climax, complete with Cortez's character bowing out gracefully (not to mention the adoptive parents).

Colbert is radiant though, and shows a lot of range, including desperation, comedy, caring for babies and children, flirtation, singing, and depressed to the point of intoxication. There were several cute kids here too, including a little black girl (Carlena Beard) who is treated with heartwarming love. There's a supporting role for a black maid as well (Mildred Washington) and the scene where she's caught dancing is amusing; it was sad to find out she died at just 28, the year this film came out.

An unwed TORCH SINGER uses her children's radio show to search for her illegitimate daughter.

Claudette Colbert has a fine time in this Pre-Code melodrama playing a distraught female who covers up for the necessary separation from her child by embracing a life of empty decadence. While highly fanciful--the heroine is both sultry nightclub chanteuse and kindly kiddy radio hostess--the plot is still most enjoyable, with Colbert wringing every bit of pathos from her character's plight.

Ricardo Cortez plays the refreshingly decent producer who assists Colbert to become a celebrity. David Manners ably plays her long-lost lover. Peppery Lydia Roberti is most enjoyable as a high-spirited young mother; her character is sorely missed when she disappears early in the film. Old Charley Grapewin adds some spark as the flirtatious breakfast cereal tycoon who sponsors Miss Colbert's radio show.

A quartet of character actresses lend able support in small roles: Florence Roberts as a sympathetic nun; Virginia Hammond as Grapewin's suspicious wife; Mildred Washington as Miss Colbert's energetic maid; and aristocratic Ethel Griffies as Manners' inflexible aunt. Baby LeRoy, nemesis of W.C. Fields, appears in only one scene as Miss Roberti's infant son.

Movie mavens will recognize unbilled Scots actress Margaret Mann as a nanny.

Torch Singer (1933)

A hobbled movie if you expect something naturalistic and moving, but Claudette Colbert is so convincing and terrific she almost compensates. A Depression-era tale of an affair that produced a baby, and then the mother having to struggle alone trying and failing to raise it. It takes off from there, as Colbert as the mother makes good with her life in other ways. The baby of course is still in the back of her mind, and causes a couple of dramatic twists later on.

The plot is a huge contrivance, and so you have to jump in and see it as a kind of morality tale, packaged a little too neatly and with some comic and tragic episodes almost too forcefully inserted. It's all interesting and fun, though, and Colbert really is a versatile and heartfelt actress here.

The one thing she may not do so well for modern audiences is sing so well, and as the title suggests, this is a key part of the middle of the movie. The orchestras are great, and the parade of side characters rather convincing as we go along, however. The sudden reappearance of the father, and the rather neat coincidences that follow, were way too much for me to swallow, however, especially the patched-on ten second last scene, which could have at least had some honest drama to it. You'll see.

It's probably the ending most people wanted to see, however, and a justification of what had happened earlier (all of which is a kind of taboo just a year later when the Hays Code would have made an out-of-wedlock birth a more serious offense). I think it's handled here in a believable way, however, at first, so thank goodness it was finished before the artifice of the later 1930s took over these kinds of themes.

The movie also has some nice (if neatly packaged) insights to the crude beginnings of commercial radio, which was always live, and which amounted to some people standing in front of a microphone. This was much like television was in its first years after WWII, with live broadcasts the necessity. And Colbert sings her own songs in this movie, for better or for worse. A total period effort, in tone and in content.